Django FileResponse

last modified January 9, 2023

Django FileResponse tutorial shows how to send a file with FileResponse in Django.

Django

Django is a high-level Python web framework. It encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Django’s primary goal is to ease the creation of complex, database-driven websites.

Django is maintained by the Django Software Foundation.

Django FileResponse

FileResponse is a subclass of StreamingHttpResponse optimized for binary files. The file is automatically close.

from django.http import FileResponse

response = FileResponse(open(‘myfile.png’, ‘rb’))

FileResponse accepts any file-like object with binary content.

Django FileResponse example

In the following example, we create a Django application that sends a file to the client. The file is a JPEG image, which is located in the images directory in the project root directory.

$ mkdir fileresponse $ cd fileresponse $ mkdir src images $ cd src

We create the project and the images and src subdirectories. Then we locate to the src directory.

$ django-admin startproject fileresponse .

We create a new Django project in the src directory.

Note: If the optional destination is provided, Django will use that existing directory as the project directory. If it is omitted, Django creates a new directory based on the project name. We use the dot (.) to create a project inside the current working directory.

$ django-admin startapp sendfile

We create a new app. The sendfile application contains the functionality to send the image to the client.

$ cd .. $ pwd /c/Users/Jano/Documents/pyprogs/django/fileresponse

We show the current working diretory.

$ tree /f src │ db.sqlite3 │ manage.py │ ├───fileresponse │ settings.py │ urls.py │ wsgi.py │ init.py │ ├───images │ bojnice.jpg │ └───sendfile │ admin.py │ apps.py │ models.py │ tests.py │ views.py │ init.py │ └───migrations init.py

These are the contents of the project directory.

src/fileresponse/settings.py

… INSTALLED_APPS = [ ‘django.contrib.admin’, ‘django.contrib.auth’, ‘django.contrib.contenttypes’, ‘django.contrib.sessions’, ‘django.contrib.messages’, ‘django.contrib.staticfiles’, ‘sendfile’, ] …

Inside the setting.py file, we add the sendfile component to installed apps.

src/fileresponse/urls.py

from django.contrib import admin from django.urls import path from sendfile.views import send_file

urlpatterns = [ path(‘admin/’, admin.site.urls), path(’’, send_file, name=‘send_file’), ]

We add a new route for the root page; it calls the send_file function from the sendfile component.

src/sendfile/views.py

from django.http import FileResponse

def send_file(response):

img = open('images/bojnice.jpg', 'rb')

response = FileResponse(img)

return response

Inside send_file, we read the image and return it to the client in FileResponse object.

$ python manage.py runserver

We run the server and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/. We should see the image in the browser.

In this article, we have demonstrated how to send a file with Django.